The Teacher and the Soldier (3 page)

Chapter Two

The beer slid down so smoothly, and after his third, Daniel felt his anger and aggression from earlier in the day moving to one side, allowing peace to wash over him. Max had just arrived and given how long Finn had been in the hallway with his lover they were clearly giving each other a very thorough hello. Kieran was on his third beer as well and grinned at Daniel. He’d been looking at Daniel in a very odd way since he’d got there and had almost started a conversation when Max’s arrival interrupted his flow. He kept glancing at the door behind which Max and Finn were getting some privacy and Daniel wondered how long Kieran could keep in whatever was bugging him. Finally Kieran appeared to lose the will for patience.

“Heard you told Liam what you’ve been doing in K-ville,” he said. There was an expression of utter innocence on his face, but Daniel wasn’t falling for it.

“I only talked to him this morning.”

“Saw him at the diner. Taken you long enough to tell him.”

“Uh huh.”

Silence. Daniel loved that Kieran sat there trying to get more information out of him. Clearly all Liam had said was that Daniel had spoken to him.

“So spill,” Kieran said. “And no shit about finding sex. We all know you haven’t had any since you got back on US soil.”

Christ
. Kieran had said that like he was commenting on the weather. Of course Daniel hadn’t got with anyone. Apart from some nebulous idea of going with Liam for mutual release, the thought of sex with another person was low on his list. A scarred and battle worn soldier with no career or prospects to talk about was hardly partner material despite what he wanted. Thing is, hearing his pitiful sex life reduced to a single sentence of dismissal from his friend, even said in jest, was a sad indictment on his life.

“Had more than you,” he snapped back but with little heat.

“That’s not difficult,” Kieran said with a grimace. “I spend my entire life fixating on straight guys.”

Daniel laughed and his laughter heralded the return of Finn and, in tow, a very tall broad Max, who looked kiss-dazed and a little shell-shocked. Max took the double sofa, Finn grabbed two beers and curled up next to him. Seeing his friend so happy filled Daniel with a mix of contradictory feelings. Happiness—after all Finn was a good guy and he should have the best. Sadness—Finn was one of the ‘Friday’s’ single gay men traversing the tricky world of being gay in a small town. Jealous—because Daniel really wanted someone like Finn. An aspiration that one day could be achieved.

“Luke Fitzgerald is back in town.” Finn had said this before Daniel had been able to open his mouth about the hostel idea. “He was up on Hill drive parked there for hours looking down at the town, Widow Jenn called it in.”

“He’s actually here?” Daniel asked.

“Got here last night. Holed up in the hotel room. Came out to post a letter and went back in. Not seen him all day.”

“Should I be worried that you’re stalking this guy?” Max joked. Finn frowned then smiled.

“Nope,” he said. “Really nice looking guy, but you know I like firemen.” Max leant down for a kiss and Kieran huffed his disapproval at the stop in talking.

“Get a room or give a proper show,” Kieran grumped. “After you tell us how he is.”

“Changed,” Finn said gently. “Looks tired.”

Daniel sighed. “I’ve been trying to get hold of him for two weeks. Every call goes to voicemail and the reply to the email I sent was short to the point of rude. Asshole.”

“What is your mom planning to do with the cabins?” Kieran asked this with concern colouring his words. He worked for Daniel’s mom as a carpenter and general handyman. Daniel knew Kieran was worried, as was his mom. To get someone buying up the cabins who wanted nothing more than to change everything was Daniel and his mom’s worst nightmare.

“God knows. We need to talk to this Luke guy. The estate from Mike passed to him as the only son and he’s screwing with me. I can’t get a straight answer from him or his lawyers. It’s all evasion.” He took another swig of beer to tamp down his anger.

“You think he will sell?”

Daniel shrugged then didn’t say anything else. With the death of Luke’s dad, Luke actually owned the other half of the Ellery resort. Daniel’s mom owned the remaining fifty per cent. Mike Fitzgerald, drunk and all round waster, had pretty much left the running of the entire cabin complex to Brenda Skylar.

He’d been murdered with a gunshot to the face. Then his body had been left on the porch of his cabin which had been burned to the ground. The resultant call out of the volunteer fireman, including Max, had left Finn exposed and vulnerable. It soon had become obvious that that had been the point. The fire had been set deliberately and a man murdered just for a distraction. Jeez. He didn’t even want to think of that night with Neil standing over Finn with a gun, moments away from killing him too.

“Poor Luke,” Kieran said. “I don’t blame him that he left and never came back.”

“Until today,” Finn pointed out.

“What happened? What’s this Luke’s story?” Max asked when the others, Daniel included, went quiet.

Finn sighed. “He left town to go to college. Never came back. Heard he got his degree and is a teacher in Richmond. No one knows the real reason why he never came back but everyone had their theories. Mike, his dad, was an ex-labourer, inherited half of Ellery Cabins from his own daddy, who, story tells, was as much of a stubborn drunk bastard as Mike was. Kind of a sad story, Mike really lost it when his dad died. His wife walked out on him and Luke, who’d been sixteen at the time. The rest is conjecture and local gossip, but when Luke left, his dad never saw a day without being drunk off his ass.”

“Broken family,” Max said softly.

“Everyone knows Mike was abusive and threw his weight around, backed up with his fists where Luke was concerned,” Kieran blurted out.

Finn frowned at first. Daniel had heard the same stories, but he guessed Finn might actually know more family history than either he or Kieran, being a cop and all. Finally Finn summarised where he stood. “There were a lot of things that happened that we will never know about.”

Kieran was evidently letting it lie at that. He continued, “I saw Luke once. He was running this basketball training session and you remember how desperate I was to play basketball?” Daniel recalled Kieran being short all through school and at five nine he wasn’t any taller now. He didn’t remember basketball training, but then Kieran and Finn weren’t exactly in his football themed social circle.

“I remember you wearing the uniform,” Finn said. “When you were what? Twelve or so?”

“Yeah, he spent some time with me then. Showed me how being in sports wasn’t all about height. I liked him. Then he came out and he did it so effortlessly and not one person thought it was wrong. I kind of looked up to him.”

Daniel tried to recall Luke in school. He seemed to sum up images of a gentle smile and brown hair but other than that his memory was sketchy. He was too involved in football and being ‘the man’ to see anything outside his limited peripheral vision.

“Oh God.” Kieran buried his face in his hands and actually blushed. “I remember something else. We were in the showers,” Kieran continued. “You gotta think though, I was a teenager who wanted to see it all, and I’d just got my head around being gay, and there is this guy standing in the shower and when he closed his eyes to wash his hair I could look. At everything. So there I am busy looking and he turned his back to me. I don’t know, maybe he forgot I was there or something, but his back was covered in these bruises. Great big blooming bruises, all kinds of colours. Could have been anything, but I wouldn’t discount his dad beating on him.”

Kieran sat back in his chair, his story done. Daniel looked immediately at Finn, waiting for Finn to say something that made everything right. That Kieran was wrong and that Luke Fitzgerald hadn’t been abused at the hand of his own father. When Finn did nothing except frown, bile rose in Daniel’s throat. He despised bullies and adding kids into the equation was the nail in the coffin. Daniel felt anger on Luke’s behalf. He’d never liked Mike or understood why Finn or his peers at the cop shop had decided it was a good idea to pander to his alcoholic binges. Finn had told him there was no point in arresting the guy if he was doing nothing except walking around town in a drunken state.

Daniel privately held the opinion that the man would have benefited from a short sharp shock. He’d been offensive to Brenda Skylar on many an occasion and Daniel hated the man for doing that to his mom. Anyway. He wasn’t going to focus on that. This was about finding out where the hell Luke Fitzgerald was and how the hell he was going to pin the man down.

“I need to go see him. Mom and I need some answers,” he announced. “Him and Mom need to meet up to sort out the cabins. I can’t afford to buy in, but if he wants to sell I can maybe influence who buys in. Meanwhile she’s worrying about the whole thing.” He helped as much as he could, but he wasn’t the person who could co-sign on decisions. Luke Fitzgerald was.

“Last thing you need is some asshole buyer fucking up what your mom has worked so hard to create,” Kieran said.

Kieran had a valid point and one that worried Daniel and his mom. Yes, Kieran had a stake in the cabins continuing as they were, after all it was his job, but he was also fiercely loyal to Benda Skylar, for which Daniel loved him like a brother.

“So,” Kieran said, “Daniel has news.”

Daniel inhaled as Finn and Max looked at him expectantly. The change in direction of conversation was disorientating and he had to take a minute to get his thoughts together. How did he start explaining this? He hadn’t told his friends half of what he had been fighting in his head since he’d left the theatre of war. They knew he was different from the confident jock he had been at school—they knew he had vulnerabilities they had never seen before in him. But…to know the full story? When he’d phoned Finn and suggested meeting up with Kieran, six months before, it had been the first the other two had heard about him being gay, let alone adding in the nightmares and stress that kept him awake some nights. In the end he felt that, like ripping off a sticking plaster, speed was the only way to get this done.

“I’ve been seeing Liam.”

“Liam?” Max asked.

“At St Martin’s hospital. He’s a doctor there,” Finn explained to Max.

“Cute, blond, blue eyes? Oh yeah, him I’ve met.” Max smirked. Finn narrowed his eyes when Max shrugged and pulled Finn in for a close hug.

“Keep going,” Kieran prompted Daniel.

“So when I came back here from war six months ago, I had some neurological problems—nerve damage, scarring.” He rolled his right shoulder at the memories of it all and winced at the tug of ache as he moved. He wasn’t sure he would ever get used to what had happened to him. He paused allowing anyone to comment, but when he focused on his friends they simply looked at him steadily. He had support here. “I also carried back some emotional weight. Survivor’s guilt, PTSD, the usual shit. When what you’ve seen and done is put up against how much your mind can actually cope with.”

“Don’t belittle what you went through Dan,” Kieran said softly. He had leant forward in his chair, his elbows on his knees and the bottle of beer dangling from one hand. His usual smile filled expression was dead serious and he had compassion in his blue eyes.

Daniel hesitated again. He could at this point dive into a whole essay on what he had felt, what had made him seek out Finn and Kieran when he came back to town. They hadn’t been close friends at school. Finn was the quiet studious one. Kieran—Finn’s best friend—was the class clown. He had been the jock—one with no worries or cares and the whole world out there for taking. He didn’t say a single thing or explain further—there was no need. No one, not even Max, who was new here, was looking for validation.

“It was good coming home to this place,” Daniel said. “Getting support from you guys and talking to the Doc was important. So, I had an idea that this would be a good place for other ex-soldiers who need somewhere to go. The reason I’ve been going into K-ville is that I was looking for a place near a hospital that I could get converted to a centre for young veterans like me.”

“You need us to volunteer,” Kieran said immediately.

“I can get the guys to help,” Max offered.

“Whatever you need,” Finn interrupted.

Daniel held up his hand to stop the words that tripped from his friend’s’ tongues. He smiled inwardly. They hadn’t heard the rest of it. What would they think of having something like this in the middle of their own town?

“The K-ville place fell through. I was talking to the Doc about maybe doing something here in Ellery instead.”

“I’ll talk to my dad,” Kieran said immediately. Kieran’s dad was Mayor of Ellery for at least another ten months and Kieran could talk him into most things. It would be good to get the Mayor on his side.

“If we found something on the outskirts of town,” Finn interjected. “Maybe some place that backed onto the Park and up to the mountain then there would be space. I’m guessing there would be cases with claustrophobia, anxiety attacks—”

“I have some experience with PTSD in a couple of my friends,” Max added. “I attended counselling sessions, I’m happy to volunteer.”

Daniel felt every ounce of breath-stealing stress leave him in a second. He wasn’t one man thinking this was a good thing. He had Doc on his side. A cop on his side in Finn, a fireman with experience of counselling in PTSD in Max, and Kieran with his natural positive outlook on life. All on his side. Kieran reached down the side of the sofa and pulled out his netbook. Turning it on, he looked up at Daniel expectantly and all thoughts of beer forgotten he simply said, “Ideas then…”